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Translation of abstract (English)

Growth - the irreversible increase in volume of an organ or tissue - is a spatio-temporal, highly dynamical process of polymorphic significance. Growth patterns of the investigated roots and leaves were gained automatically and interpreted on a temporal scale of minutes and a spatial scale of less than one millimeter. The combination of spatial and temporal high-performance measurements was reached by the use of a novel digital image sequence processing method. During this thesis, the method was put into a botanical routine method, which led to fundamental new insights on different plant regulatory levels. For roots of maize, a double-peaked maximum of growth rate distribution was detected. Its origin is possibly related to the staggered spatio-temporal differentiation of tissues. A constant diurnal course of growth activity was shown for the growth zone as a whole. Circumnutatory growth movements were registered. Their frequency was shown to be dependent on external nutrient availability, which also affects growth rate distribution and compound concentrations within the root growth zone. Leaves of tobacco and castor bean showed a diurnal variation of growth activity, in contrast to the conditions within roots, with a maximum at the night-day-transition. This growth pattern probably represents a circadian rhythm; running on even in isolated leaf disks in continuous light. The maximum of the diurnal course was shifted by differential heating of root and shoot. The temporal distribution of growth activity was correlated closely with the expression of an a-expansin-gene (NtExp1). In contrast to the conditions in roots, pronounced diurnal variations of many compound concentrations were found here. Nutatory and nyctinastic leaf movements were characterised as the expression of spatially differentiated growth activity, which is regulated by biomechanical means.